pork

There’s a mantra that’s gaining momentum: local produce is king. It seems to be an all-pervasive mantra and is no longer a niche philosophy reserved for the progressive and early adopters. It’s one that is being increasingly repeated from market stall to kitchen tables; from small diners to fine dining kitchens where menus proudly tout […]

There is an undeniable sense of guilt-ridden déjà vu as I write these words: “I’m sorry for the absence and the lack of posts of late”. I’m not sure where the cultural custom owes its roots, but for guilty Chinese children confessing their sins, the customary stance is to have your head bowed, pulling on […]

On my Paddock to Plate degustation post, one reader, Alex, left me an interesting, albeit totally unrelated comment to the post topic: “…Teflon contains a chemical called per-flouro-octanoid-acid also known as PFOA, which can cause cancer. If you over heat teflon coated pans, to 260 degrees Celsius, you get the risk of releasing that chemical…and […]

What’s the most adventurous, most challenging thing you’ve ever eaten? That was the question I posed to my friend, Jo, as we waited outside Ten Buck Alley – the location of Wasted, a new pop-up restaurant in Darlinghurst offering a value-packed 6 course degustation for $70 or matched wines for $120. Most pop up restaurants […]

What do we consider Australian? What’s fair dinkum Aussie? For the uninitiated, “fair dinkum” is Australian lingo for “genuine”. It is a term probably lost of the current urban and multicultural generation, but one still stereotypically associated with farmers, the older generation, and folks born and bred in the country – generally those characters we […]

With another Chinese New Year peering around the corner, it seems ripe for reflection again. With the recent publication of Amy Chua’s controversial book: “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” and the arguably even more inflammatory publicity in the Wall Street Journal, Chinese parenting has taken a hard knock in the media in recent times. […]

There were so many events on at SIFF 2010 that one really had to sift through the pages of events, lunches, dinners, email and impromptu twitter announcements to keep on top of the events that most appealed to our individual tastes. On one hand I relished the opportunity to seek out the rare hidden find […]

Last Saturday the vibrant city of Cabramatta in Sydney’s western suburbs hosted a barbeque as part of the CRAVE Sydney International Food Festival (SIFF). The Cabramatta Allsorts Barbeque in Freedom Plaza was covered by Simon Marnie’s 702AM ABC Weekends show and I had the good fortune to be asked to be interviewed on the show […]

I’ve finally made it to the last birthday related post! In this post I mentioned that my mother’s birthday fell 2 days before mine this year due to some glitch in the lunar calendar. Well, to crowd the birthday space just that bit more, the Co-pilot’s younger sister, Phi, celebrates her birthday the day before […]

We’ve been keen to try out the Hunanese fare on offer at Chairman Mao Chinese Restaurant since a recent review in the SMH. The Co-pilot and I tried to guess how Hunanese style Chinese food might taste – but this exercise largely returns blank faces. We hazarded a guess that given Chairman Mao himself was […]